Rose awoke to a sudden sharp noise. She sat up with a start, her bright eyes opening to reveal a swimming pool of nightmares. Dreams and reality molded together for an agonizing stretch of time, creating an amalgamation of horror. Slowly, as she gathered her bearings, the terror melted down to a manageable knot within her stomach. Once her heart rate had reached a more manageable level, Rose leaned shakily back against the cold wall once more, vainly trying to locate the danger's source.
Of course, there was nothing to see thanks to the heavy curtain of darkness surrounding her. For all she knew, the sound had simply been made by a phantom, an imaginary clamor created for her alone to hear and to fear. In a place where the subconscious and conscious melted together while a person engaged in restless, anxiety-ridden sleep, it wouldn't surprise her to find that she had come awake to a false alarm.
Once she had gathered her nerves once more, Rose stood with the help of the dungeon wall, ignoring the fact that her hands were met with a sickeningly moist and slimy texture atop the sandstone. If rocks and minerals could cry, then she was certain that this was exactly how it'd feel.
Rose began pacing about her small dungeon cage, stretching her legs and reawakening her mind. In the meantime, she tried to decipher how much time had passed. She knew that it was the middle of the night when she and James had been discarded here like yesterday's garbage, but it didn't help that she had fallen asleep. Truth be told, she hadn't even realized that she'd drifted off; James had fallen silent, she had nestled up to ride out the storm, and then . . . .
At any rate, time had passed. She couldn't keep track of said time, but at least some progression had been made.
Falling into a rhythm, Rose continued to walk back and forth through her allotted space. She fretted for a while before falling into a state of insufferable impatience, then at last came to a state where her mind was elsewhere completely. If this was to be a waiting game, then so be it. It certainly wouldn't break her.
A more pressing concern than fighting boredom was hunger. It started to make its appearance slowly, but within an hour that small annoyance turned into a nearly insufferable pain. Luckily, Rose had been trained to deal with things such as hunger, Liana knowing full well that it was imperative to fight and win against the whims of the stomach. Eventually starvation could become a concern, of course, but not now. The truly pressing worry that burdened her was hydration. She had successfully gone days without eating, but water was something that she absolutely needed. A dry mind had impaired thinking, and a dry tongue tended to lose its restraints.
Finally, she reached a point where she just needed to speak. Regardless of whether or not James wanted to talk to her, she needed to talk to him. "James?"
For a long, agonizing moment, Rose wasn't certain if he was going to respond or not. It got to the point where she wondered if he was there at all. Finally, as she was in the process of opening her mouth to whisper his name again, he answered. "What?"
A breath of air escaped her mouth. Though relieved that she wasn't alone, there was no way in Hell that she was going to comment on that ease of her mind. "Did you fall asleep."
"Slept like a baby. Why'd you wake me up?"
". . . I'll take that as a no. How long has it been?"
"I don't know." In those three simple syllables, James expressed a detering harshness that would have seemed out of character even a day previous. Something about the atmosphere in the dungeon could alter a person, but his transformation was happening rather rapidly. "Let me just check my sundial real quick, or maybe trace the stars in the sky to figure out the approximate hour." There was a heavily implied eye roll in his sarcasm.
"You have a right to be mad at me, but work with me for a minute, please." Rose could be as contrite as she pleased about this whole situation, but she didn't have any time available for accepting such useless scorn.
"Do I sound mad?" He did, but Rose allowed the question to retain its rhetoric nature by keeping her mouth shut. "We both messed up, so all we can do is suck it up. I don't need you to start apologizing again." There was some rustling from James's cell as he shifted positions, simultaneously shifting mindsets as well. "I can tell you that you've been pacing for about an hour, considering the fact that it's hard to block out echoing footsteps and not be hyper aware of how long they're making noise. But other than that I lost track of time."
At the mention of her pacing, Rose stopped abruptly. Had it really been so long? And had she really been making that much of a clamor? Her feet had been moving on their own accord, really, so she'd given her actions no thought.
As soon as she halted, James let out a small sigh. "For an assassin you walk pretty loud," he informed. He didn't speak his mind in simple words, but it was clear that he thought very little of her abilities based upon her thoughtless walking.
"Yeah? Well, for a prince you're pretty weak," Rose shot back wryly.
They lapsed back into silence. Finding it weird to continue standing without a purpose, Rose sat with her legs crossed in the middle of her cell. James coughed, the proceeded to throw caution to the wind.
"I either walk out a prince or a dead man."
Not expecting their tense conversation to take such a sudden and dark turn, Rose blinked. "Don't be too melodramatic," she sighed. "I believe that they'll kill me, but I can't see them putting a blade to your neck as readily as my own. Whether or not your father leads you to think in these terms, you're the future of the kingdom. Even if it means tearing apart this dungeon, you're going to get out of here alive and unscathed."
James merely grumbled in response. He was really in a bad mood by this point; a mixture of his lack of sleep and precarious situation had plenty of time to mature and ripen in the undisturbed darkness of his cell. "You have clearly never seen my family history," he scoffed. "Maybe I'm overreacting. I always overreact. But I can't shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen." He let that foreboding statement hang in the air for a second before continuing. "And besides, if I manage to get out of here without the explicit consent of the king, I'll be on the run. And some might argue that being a treasonous fugitive is worse than dying to unfair charges."
"You really don't think that your father will let you out by the end of all this?"
James' silence constituted an answer, though a very enigmatic one at that. "None of this is exactly going to work out," he finally muttered. He didn't have much faith for the future, but who could blame him? Since King Vincent was in charge of his future, there wasn't exactly a precedent of family faith in which to rely on.
The end of that particular thread of topic was chopped off neatly by the sound of a door slamming, followed by slow, heavy footsteps. Like a jolt of electricity, the sound effectively silenced both prisoners completely. Neither of them knew what was coming, so they could only wait for either the best of news or the worst of possibilities.
Whoever was coming down to the dungeon took their sweet time doing so. Each step was a gap between separate eternities, pulling Rose deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of anxiety. When at last they reached the dungeon's floor they progressed a little quicker, speed no longer hindered by the treacherously steep staircase. As the footsteps got closer, her heart rate increased, a pounding sensation which resonated in her chest.
"Food," a deep, gruff, masculine voice grunted. A latch was opened at the bottom of the door to Rose's cell and a small hinged door raised, creating the perfect sized space for a small, worn tray to be pushed through the created opening. Rose perked up at the declaration, legs unfolding as she scrambled the few short paces to the cell door. The small door clanged to a close and was latched, and she was left to examine the provisions bestowed upon her.
A stale and far from generous hunk of bread sat on a metal plate. Not much to boast of, but at least there was also water.
The repeated soundtrack of hinged door opening and slamming occurred in James' cell, followed by the wordless retreat of the man who delivered the food. Both Rose and James refrained from speaking until after the door to the castle opened and shut once again, confirming the man's ultimate exit.
"Bread, an apple, a bit of dried meat, water." James sounded scornful of what he found. "If that doesn't legitimize all of my concerns, then I don't know what will."
"Bread. Water." Rose rolled her eyes. "Even in prison you're still a prince, Your Highness."
James was silent at the perspective he gained. After a pause, there was a crunch as he took a bite of the apple.
It may have bothered some that James didn't so much as offer to share, but Rose could care less. He was wounded enough by that amount of food, so she wouldn't have expected for him to be so selfless, especially considering who she was. Just because the two of them were in the same situation didn't mean that they were suddenly of the same kind of people.
Rose uncertainly picked up her hunk of bread. It was hard, probably hard enough to bash a skull in if worse came to worse. Still, it was edible, so she didn't complain, just dug her fingers in and ripped it in two. Setting one of the pieces back onto the sad little plate, Rose tried taking a bite to no avail. Teeth rejecting the challenge, she rolled her eyes and tried dunking it into the cup of water.
It worked, softening the stale specimen enough to make eating manageable. On the other hand, it also soaked up her limited water supply, a factor which concerned her more than hard bread.
She ate the rest of that half of the bread slowly, giving herself plenty of time to chew. It was more work than it was worth, unfortunately, so she placed the other half into her pocket, a potential task for later. There was a good chance that she'd need it more later than she needed it now.
When it came to the water, though, she couldn't find the same restraint within her. The first sip was slow and full of relish, but the rest of it disappeared before she could even register it being gone. The drink wasn't sufficient, but it would have to be enough for now.
Rose sat back, settling back into a cross legged position as brooding thoughts descended upon her mind. She hadn't expected to get any food whatsoever, perhaps not even anything to drink, either, but what she had gotten renewed the spark of ire within her heart. She'd had her fair share of missed meals, and she'd tasted one too many nasty ones, as well. If the king was going to forget about her down here, the least he could do was send her down something that murdered appetites while simultaneously working towards filling a stomach. As prison hierarchy went, she figured that she was prime prison personnel and ought to be treated as such.
The thing which eventually broke Rose out of her thoughts was not a sense of danger or a person approaching her prison cell. In fact, it was hardly a intrusive sound at all. The thing which set it apart from the rest of the sounds occasionally echoing through the dungeon was how out of place it was. There were drafts which carried moans and shrieks on its back, even the scuffling of unseen prisoners and rodents trapped in far off darkness, but she had not yet had the clattering of dancing skeletons touch her ears.
Rose tried to focus her eyes on the shadows before her in vain; attempting to train her eyes on twisting shadows was as impossible as keeping water cupped in her hands. "James?"
"Yes?"
"Are those your teeth chattering?"
His lack of response was affirmation. An extra blanket of cold had descended, and it made no difference whether it was his pride or his fatigue which kept him from admitting that the chill had taken root in him.
It wasn't impossible to image James curled in a ball in a desperate attempt to preserve his body heat in the adjacent cell. It took even less energy to picture him miserable and wrathful, the son of a king who had known nothing but physical comfort up until this current moment. Truth be told, it painted a pitiful picture in Rose's mind.
Despite the fact that she was an assassin, despite the fact that she had no reason to give up her own physical comfort for someone who had so recently crashed into her life, Rose found herself tugging off her robe. The few buttons in the front undone, she tugged each arm out of the embrace of its sleeve one by one.
The chill which had been knocking at her door immediately descended upon her. If she had any doubts about the robe serving its purpose, they were completely banished from her mind, chased away by an involuntary shiver running down her spine. The warmth and heat preservation of the fabric called her back, but Rose resisted. This was nothing she couldn't manage.
"Here." Before she could fully think through the decision, Rose stood, folded up her robe, and shoved it through the small gap left by the bars separating the two cells.
She kept her hand suspended there for a few long seconds before her offering was accepted, tugged out of her grasp by uncertain hands. "What's this?" James sounded distrustful, but also highly curious. "Your robe?"
Rose shrugged in response before remembering that he couldn't see her. "Yeah. I was getting hot, so I figured that someone might as well be using it in my place." The lie was so painfully obvious that it actually hurt, but James was gracious enough to stay silent and not call out her bluff.
There was some ruffling of fabric as James put on the robe. He didn't speak immediately, but eventually cleared his throat in preparation to do so. Instead of an apology, however, he merely said, "I guess that you're used to being cold. Stalking around at night, dealing with your heart . . . ."
Rose scowled at that tasteless and offensive comment, but her displeasure wasn't as strong as the images which flashed through her head, pictures of things which she hadn't called to mind recently. She remembered Liana, the good times that they had together, the exciting day in which she had received the very robe that James now wore. Memories like this were precious, considering the fact that they were limited. Many things had happened in her life, ending up as a brutal cycle of give and take with an emphasis on the taking. At the end of the day, that piece of clothing was all that she had left from her teacher, not to mention the fact that it was the sole surviving remnant of her fleeting childhood.
But James couldn't know any of that. Even if they had been the closest of friends for years, the likelihood of him knowing such a personal detail about her was slim. Not only did Rose fail to be the most forthcoming of individuals, but attachment, in her mind, had always translated into weakness. Look at what had happened with James, after all; her connection to him had only brought the two of them to ruin.
Even though she was a monster, that part of her was infallibly human. The matters of the heart never ended up coinciding with the matters of the mind.
Physically colder than before but nonetheless feeling more inward warmth, Rose retreated to the wall at the back of her cell and sank down against it. Regardless of how sour James was, she felt a perverse feeling of tranquility fall upon her. Mixed with her muted hunger, her fatigue, and the ambient murmurings of the dungeons, it was as close to a lullaby as she'd ever gotten.
Rose closed her eyes once more, wrapped her arms about herself to fight off the chill, and settled in for a more peaceful, if brief, round of rest. Even so, there was a twinge of anxiety dwelling just below the surface, causing her heart to race irrationally. She couldn't have accurately known that this was the calm before the storm, and yet some truths were simply instinctual.
-----
Rose was once more awaken by a noise. It seemed as though her hearing had grown two-fold since her vision had been more or less robbed from her. As she blinked grogginess from her eyes, she realized that someone was approaching. The importance of questioning who the person would be didn't register in her still muddled mind.
The footsteps stopped outside her cell, followed by a jingle of keys. "Rise and shine, Alister!" a sweetly cheerful voice called out, filling the empty space of the dungeon. The man pulled open the cell, lantern swinging in hand, the flickering light casting foreboding shadows on his face, turning a wide smile into something harsh and dangerous.
Something about him instantly set Rose on edge. A wave of cold anticipation was followed in quick succession by the overwhelming heat of anger. "Excuse you," she muttered, speaking contemptuously out of habit rather than reason.
"Excuse me?" The man laughed, setting down the lantern and beginning to approach Rose. "Oh, you humor me."
Eyes narrowed against the light and out of a sense of caution, Rose got to her feet and took a step back, finding herself to literally be up against a wall in this situation. She struggled to find something callous to say or something heroic to do, but she came up with nothing. There was no escape, and there was no doubt about what was coming.
"My name's Holden." Rose found herself being roughly spun around, hands brought together and a rope wrapped about them, bound once again. "And it is my deepest pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Even as she was dragged out of her cell and through the dungeon, Rose couldn't find it in herself to speak up nor resist. This felt too much like a nightmare from the past come to the future, only many, many times worse.
A prisoner such as herself was only brought out of her cell for two reasons: to be executed, or to be tortured. And there was little doubt in her mind that the latter was, at this moment, the right answer.